June 05, 2009

Is This Dumb or What?

From Yahoo (no exclamation point, thanks) News, a news story headlined "Conservatives Are More Easily Disgusted."People who squirm at the sight of bugs or are grossed out by blood and guts are more likely to be politically conservative, new studies find.

When I read "blood and guts," I think of butchering your own wild game, and I will let you readers think about which political party (rightly or wrongly) is associated with hunters.

A lot of this stuff is based on work by Jonathan Haidt, and most of it is not nearly as good as he is. His moral emotions article is a lot better than this, for example.

More germane to the topic is his What Makes People Vote Republican? article, including all the responses, especially Michael Shermer's. The original article strikes one as a fish just beginning to realize it might have some call to name and understand the substance it swims in.